My own favourite, however, was the briefer and more understated “Viens pisser avec moi,” which, in another context, would sound more like an unsavory night-club solicitation. According to Martin’s allegation, Milioto sought out discreet locales to pass out envelopes of cash to grease the wheels between Montreal contracting firms and the Union Montreal-run City Hall. Banks of urinals and toilets, with their associated connotations of sewage, allegedly provided a symbolically fitting backdrop for this activity.

Though it seems like a mere vulgar anglicism, “pisser” apparently passes as real French. (The proof: In 2011, no less a French cultural luminary than Gérard Depardieu reportedly yelled out “Je veux pisser, je veux pisser” in a packed plane cabin before relieving himself on the aisle carpet.) And that’s a shame — because Quebec’s leaders seem a lot more eager to defend the French language than the integrity of public office. Were English-language quid pro quos going down in Quebec’s men’s rooms, the gendarmes at the Office de le langue française might finally be put to good use, policing the latrines from behind one-way mirrors for evidence of goodfella bilingualism.

Now is a good time for Quebec politicians to take a long hard look in that bathroom mirror, and re-examine the parochial priorities that have dominated discourse for decades. As Lucien Bouchard has pointed out, the province’s obsession with the sovereignty question and new language laws has served to muzzle needed scrutiny of Quebec’s unsustainable fiscal model and other bread-and-butter policy matters. The same obsessions arguably have served to discourage meaningful scrutiny of rot in public life.

There is no reliable metric for measuring corruption province by province. But the disclosures at the Charbonneau Commission suggest that the culture of thick-cash-envelopes is alive and well in Quebec — in a way that has no similarly prevalent counterpart elsewhere in the country. Certainly, it is impossible to conceive of a mayor in any other province being able to imagine — as Tremblay apparently does — that he would be able to ride out this scandal with his office intact.

As for the rest of Canadians, perhaps we should stop being so ashamed of acknowledging all of this openly. Back in 2010, Maclean’s magazine’s Martin Patriquin published a cover story fronted under the banner “The most corrupt province in Canada,” featuring Bonhomme Carnaval happily sauntering around with a suitcase full of money. Foreshadowing more recent investigations, the article noted that “A fundraising official with the Union Montréal, the party of Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay, was found to have led a scheme in which three per cent of the value of contracts was distributed to political parties, councillors and city bureaucrats.”

If anything, however, the article understated Quebec’s problems. And Patriquin conceded, up front, that “Quebec doesn’t have a monopoly on bad behaviour.” Even so, the response was shrill. Then-Premier Jean Charest demanded a formal apology — despite the fact that not a single word of the article was shown to be false.

And, to this country’s shame, Charest got the public shaming of Maclean’s that he wanted — and from Parliament no less.

In September, 2010, shortly after the article appeared, the Bloc Québécois put forward a motion declaring “that this House, while recognizing the importance of vigorous debate on subject of public interest, expresses its profound sadness at the prejudice displayed and the stereotypes employed by Maclean’s magazine to denigrate the Quebec nation, its history and its institutions.” It passed the House without debate.

Notwithstanding the cynical nod to freedom of the press, it was an outrageous and thoroughly creepy motion for democratic lawmakers to embrace. As Maclean’s magazine noted at the time, it was thought to be “only the second time in a century that MPs have closed ranks to express their disapproval with the work of a news publication.” Yet government House Leader John Baird blithely dismissed any concerns by airily observing: “it goes without saying that matters of national unity are sensitive.”

“Sensitive,” you say? More sensitive than corruption, organized crime, and public faith in elected government officials? In view of the fact that testimony at the Charbonneau Commission is lending strong support to just about every word Martin Patriquin wrote two years ago, perhaps Parliament might find the time and courage to rescind its 2010 Maclean’s smackdown. It would be a merely symbolic gesture, I know. But at least it would send the message that, in the rest of Canada, at least, we care more about the quality of our governments than protecting the parochial vanities of the politicians who lead them.

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